Rioting by underclass Brits has long history

If being flogged, hanged and disembowelled in public didn't deter riots spawned by inequity in 1595, what's likely to work now?

By Stephen Hume; August 17, 2011 - Vancouver Sun
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Rioting+underclass+Brits+lo...

On June 6, 1595, London's apprentices (poor teenagers), vagrants (homeless welfare types) and discharged soldiers (the newly jobless) rioted.

The authorities cracked down. These rioters, "the basest and poorest," had planned to "robbe, steal, pill and spoile the welthy and well-disposed citizens and inhabitaunts," cried an alarmed over-class.

Historians later concluded that the upheavals were triggered not by criminal greed but by economic conditions and desire for greater equity as the income gap widened between the poorest and richest, who remained strangely insensitive to the plight of commoners.

On June 27, five apprentices arrested during the riot were publicly flogged as a deterrent. Authorities suppressed the popular mass media - theatre - which they claimed incited the riot and secretly communicated intentions.

The apprentices rioted again. On July 24, five apprentices were condemned. To deter further rioting, they were publicly hanged, their intestines ripped out while still alive and then hacked to pieces.

The apprentices rioted again that October. And again in July and September of 1596. Then again in 1597. More were executed, noted in John Foxe's The Book of Martyrs for their "barbarous death."

In 1710, apprentices rioted. There were public floggings. In 1715, the Riot Act made it a capital offence not to disperse after one warning. Apprentices rioted again in 1716. One was shot dead. In 1721, underpaid and overworked servants rioted.

In 1823, riots occurred again and 123 were arrested. Two were executed as examples. Riots occurred again in 1830. This time, they spread to 21 English counties and continued into 1831.

Rioters in poor districts attacked the houses of the rich. Even the Duke of Wellington, hero of Waterloo, had all his windows broken. Thousands were arrested. More than 250 received death sentences, although fewer than 20 were hanged. But more than 1,000 were imprisoned or deported to penal colonies.

In this frame of reference, it's creepily fascinating to watch England's moneyed over-class distance itself from the social context in which the recent riots occurred.

So far the blame has included: a gang culture which is said to involve one in 20 British teenagers; lazy single mothers who breed ill-disciplined brats to inflate their welfare payments; spoiled teenagers who know all their rights but none of their responsibilities.

Then there is the shameless mollycoddling of the faux poor by a permissive nanny state constructed by socialists. It instils a sense of entitlement in the underclass for such frills as adequate health care, decent housing and public education.

The most popular solution proposed? Punish rioters severely. Make examples of them and they won't do it any more. One question: if being flogged, hanged and disembowelled in public hasn't deterred riots spawned by inequity, what's likely to work?

In other words, all this high-minded umbrage over moral decay contributes nothing to understanding, without which there's no possibility of addressing the social decay at the root of unrest.

What might those root causes be?

First, The Guardian newspaper's interactive map shows riots recurring not in wealthy neighbourhoods, which is what you might expect from laments about "recreational rioters," but in poorer districts. These districts, according to a report in 2009, have expanded from the inner city. Fifty-four per cent of low-income families live in outer London.

Second, those charged so far are predominantly adults (62 per cent), not slumming middle-class teenagers. The majority (69 per cent) are charged not with stealing plasma TVs but with violence, disorder and arson, an altogether more sinister overtone.

Third, a 100-fold income gap now separates Britain's over-class from the 11 million with jobs who still live below the poverty line.

One in seven childless working-age adults in the U.K. lives in poverty - the highest level of the modern era - and redistribution strategies intended to achieve more equity were systematically subverted and neutralized by tax breaks for the rich.

Another domestic report says London has an "appalling" rate of child poverty - defined as a family subsisting on $16 a day or less - with 50 per cent of children in 16 boroughs living "in or on the brink of destitution." In Tottenham, 75 per cent of children were classified as "struggling." About 650,000 London children live like this.

Fourth, with youth unemployment for those aged 16 to 24 reaching 20.5 per cent, the highest since records began being kept in 1992, it seems deliberately disingenuous to blame unrest on laziness, boredom and greed; sloppy parenting or permissive schools. In Germany, where there's heavy investment in training and apprenticeship programs, youth unemployment is 8.1 per cent.

After the British riots, Thomas Kielinger, veteran London correspondent for one major German daily, told Deutsche Welle, Germany's equivalent of the BBC: "You have a whole underclass of youngsters coming from ghettos that are not integrated ... into British society. They are left alone to fester without a job, without motivation, without family values, they are growing up essentially disconnected from the mainstream of modern British society. And they have no incentive to invest in the country to which they are not connected.... This is really a deep, festering problem of the underclass at the bottom of Britain's social ladder."

Knee-jerk recrimination from a British over-class and its apologists, blinkered by self-interest, follows a predictable pattern.

"Class hatred has become an integral, respectable part of modern British culture," writes Owen Jones in his recent book Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class. "It is present in newspapers, TV comedy shows, films, Internet forums, social networking sites and every day conversations."

"Social problems like poverty and unemployment were once understood as injustices that sprang from flaws within capitalism which, at the very least, had to be addressed," he argues. "Yet today they have become understood as the consequences of personal behaviour, individual defects and even choice."

Instead of retreating into the rhetoric of 1595, perhaps British leaders might examine the relationship between deteriorating economic conditions, growing income disparity, perceptions that the social contract has been torn up by an uncaring over-class and the way the underclass responds.